Thanks for posting that most interesting article! I wouldn't mind trying this for a week. I would not rely on pasta though, it's just not my thing. I can see how this would be possible and healthy as well. Challenge accepted!

Interesting! It makes you realize how much less you could live on if you needed to. I agree the author could have included more healthy food--and Trader Joe's isn't the best place to save money per portion as most things are sold in small quantities.

It made me kind of sad how she didn't budget for any seasoning! Dried seasoning packets are usually less than a dollar. I would have added dried beans and lentils instead of so much pasta. And canned veggies are cheap too.

Interesting! It makes you realize how much less you could live on if you needed to. I agree the author could have included more healthy food--and Trader Joe's isn't the best place to save money per portion as most things are sold in small quantities.

It made me kind of sad how she didn't budget for any seasoning! Dried seasoning packets are usually less than a dollar. I would have added dried beans and lentils instead of so much pasta. And canned veggies are cheap too.

It makes me want to try a super frugal grocery month!

It probably depends on where you live. Trader Joe's is a go-to stop for me, because by weight, most of their food is cheaper than other stores in our area.

I'm glad the author mentioned more than once that this is technically possible, but not recommended since fruits and vegetables didn't show up very often. Instead of tons of pasta like the author I stick to beans and rice. My goal has been to live on $1 per meal which I come close to, and in making these changes to my budget I discovered how many expensive snacks I used to pad my lunches. After cutting them out completely, I discovered they were nutritionally useless and didn't actually do much to fill me up. That discovery also troubles me in that packaged snacks make up a large portion of my son's diet since he's so picky. He won't eat a vegetable, but he'll drink it out of a can. Scaling this challenge up to include multiple family members can be more difficult.

Women and older folk get less, only breastfeeding women get more overall, so this can be considered an upper limit to consumption under govt recommendations.

Now looking at the cheapest versions of each at my local supermarket, assuming I bought in some bulk and spread things out,

Vegies, frozen mixed, 1kg = $3 or 0.45x$3 = $1.35/day. There are cheaper packs of mixed vegies, but these are usually bulked up with potatoes and corn, which technically fit in the "grains" category. Fresh can be had for $3/kg and up, though.

Fruit can be got for $2/kg seasonally on average, so that's 0.3x$2 = $0.60/day

Grain you'd want some variety, and with 3 cups to have just have 1 of each a meal. I would get- oats 750g pack for $1.20 = $0.24/day- rice 1kg pack for $1.40 = 0.15x$1.40 = $0.21/day- pasta 500g pack penne $0.65 = 150/500x$0.65 = $0.20/day

In all, $5.52 a day, $38.64 a week or $167.31 per calendar month. You'd have to get some things weekly and some monthly, like you'd buy a 1kg block of cheese and use it over 25 days.

If we just chose the cheapest in each category and didn't care about variety, it'd be vegies $1.35/dayfruit $0.60/daygrain - pasta $0.20/daymeat etc - eggs $1.50/daydairy - milk $0.69/dayOr $4.34/day in all.

They allow for a person like me 0-3 daily serves of "discretionary food choices", which is basically junk food, fizzy drinks and booze.

You could get the price a bit down by buying fresh seasonal vegies, and looking for bulk buy and "almost out of date, straight into the freezer" meat purchases, that sort of thing. At a guess you could knock it down 10-20% without too much drama.

But assuming none of that, it's only 2-3 times the $2 a day.

As a comparison, my own household of 2 adults and 2 children spends $125 a week on average, so 3-4 times this minimum for 1 male. Which seems about right, especially since we do get things like camembert from time to time.

In her other challenge, she tried to live in $4/day (being the equivalent of food stamps) and struggled. I would suggest that people who actually have a history of being poor would not feel prosperous, but they wouldn't struggle as she did. Speaking from my own experience of being low-income in the past, you learn strategies, you learn what tends to be cheap yet good, you learn the times supermarkets discount things, and so on. It's not easy but you manage.

For example, she bought a dozen organic eggs for US$3.99; people who are actually poor have no time nor interest in organic free range gluten-free vegan fair-trade stuff, they can't afford any pretensions. So that'd save $2 or so. Much the same goes for the half-gallon of almond milk - does she really think some single mother in the projects is putting almond milk on her cheerios?

Obviously circumstances will vary, some places are food deserts where all you can get cheap is sugary carbs. But she'd find she did better with experience. The pretensions would fade away, and she'd learn that butternut pumpkins are generally cheaper than pre-made butternut pumpkin soup.

Experience, and a lengthy acquaintance with the realities of low-income, make a big difference.

Women and older folk get less, only breastfeeding women get more overall, so this can be considered an upper limit to consumption under govt recommendations.

Now looking at the cheapest versions of each at my local supermarket, assuming I bought in some bulk and spread things out,

Vegies, frozen mixed, 1kg = $3 or 0.45x$3 = $1.35/day. There are cheaper packs of mixed vegies, but these are usually bulked up with potatoes and corn, which technically fit in the "grains" category. Fresh can be had for $3/kg and up, though.

Fruit can be got for $2/kg seasonally on average, so that's 0.3x$2 = $0.60/day

Grain you'd want some variety, and with 3 cups to have just have 1 of each a meal. I would get- oats 750g pack for $1.20 = $0.24/day- rice 1kg pack for $1.40 = 0.15x$1.40 = $0.21/day- pasta 500g pack penne $0.65 = 150/500x$0.65 = $0.20/day

In all, $5.52 a day, $38.64 a week or $167.31 per calendar month. You'd have to get some things weekly and some monthly, like you'd buy a 1kg block of cheese and use it over 25 days.

If we just chose the cheapest in each category and didn't care about variety, it'd be vegies $1.35/dayfruit $0.60/daygrain - pasta $0.20/daymeat etc - eggs $1.50/daydairy - milk $0.69/dayOr $4.34/day in all.

They allow for a person like me 0-3 daily serves of "discretionary food choices", which is basically junk food, fizzy drinks and booze.

You could get the price a bit down by buying fresh seasonal vegies, and looking for bulk buy and "almost out of date, straight into the freezer" meat purchases, that sort of thing. At a guess you could knock it down 10-20% without too much drama.

But assuming none of that, it's only 2-3 times the $2 a day.

As a comparison, my own household of 2 adults and 2 children spends $125 a week on average, so 3-4 times this minimum for 1 male. Which seems about right, especially since we do get things like camembert from time to time.

In her other challenge, she tried to live in $4/day (being the equivalent of food stamps) and struggled. I would suggest that people who actually have a history of being poor would not feel prosperous, but they wouldn't struggle as she did. Speaking from my own experience of being low-income in the past, you learn strategies, you learn what tends to be cheap yet good, you learn the times supermarkets discount things, and so on. It's not easy but you manage.

For example, she bought a dozen organic eggs for US$3.99; people who are actually poor have no time nor interest in organic free range gluten-free vegan fair-trade stuff, they can't afford any pretensions. So that'd save $2 or so. Much the same goes for the half-gallon of almond milk - does she really think some single mother in the projects is putting almond milk on her cheerios?

Obviously circumstances will vary, some places are food deserts where all you can get cheap is sugary carbs. But she'd find she did better with experience. The pretensions would fade away, and she'd learn that butternut pumpkins are generally cheaper than pre-made butternut pumpkin soup.

Experience, and a lengthy acquaintance with the realities of low-income, make a big difference.

I would argue that a good natural peanut butter could replace the "meat" serving, perhaps allowing one to buy less eggs.

Also I wonder if dark leafy greens could provide the calcium that the "dairy" category represents.

Problem is, anything else, and your numbers go way down. Fish is 6 grams per oz, but the cost of fish is higher than that $1.99/pound. I don't buy it much, but I think cheap cuts tend to be 6.99/pound on sale? That's bumping you up to $4.37 for your protein requirements. Pulling data from here:http://realeverything.com/gram-of-protein-per-pound/

I might be doing my conversions wrong, but that's coming out to 250 grams of protein per kilogram of "burger patty" (which hopefully they mean a 85/15 ground beef). So I'm looking at a quarter kilogram of ground beef to get the full protein fix.

Eating on $2/day does not sound found, even MMM's frugal standard was $3/day, and I think he said he averages $6/day now ($2/meal).

Facebook is full of naysayers. Whenever I post something about debt or savings or investing I get maybe 1 like and 0 comments. If it's something of no substance like a photo of avocado toast with a caption about millennials (no joke), everyone's there. People want to be entertained, they don't want to face the reality that their own choices (gasp!) are a primary reason for their situation. They want to blame the economy or their salary or grocery prices, not the fact that they buy luxury tropical fruit from overseas in the winter and then get fast food instead and let the fruit rot because they're too lazy to cut it up.

Hopefully some people are reading and applying what you share, even though you don't know it. I've had a couple friends come out of the woodwork and send me messages thanking me for my posts because they've started budgeting and are now doing better in life. If I can help one or two friends, even if I never find out I did, it's worth it.

Also it can be a fun challenge if you're into that sort of thing! I've calculated the cost of meals before and even living in Canada you can get pretty low. I would add oatmeal ($0.10/serving if on sale at Costco!) and rice/beans/lentils. Inexpensive fruits and vegetables. And hot sauce. :)

If you want organic free-range chicken breast for lunch obviously that's going to blow your whole budget, even if you buy it at Costco (at least here).

I would argue that a good natural peanut butter could replace the "meat" serving, perhaps allowing one to buy less eggs.

Also I wonder if dark leafy greens could provide the calcium that the "dairy" category represents.

Nutritionally, meat will offer things peanuts don't.

Under their guidelines, dark leafy greens come under "vegies" rather than meat; if you have leafy greens, you have twice as much, ie 1 cup chopped mixed vegies = 2 cups leafy greens. If you don't want meat, they suggest more dairy; they offer no guidelines for vegans.

Quote from: solon

I was immediately informed that protein alone costs more than 2$ a day.

As always, it depends how much you want. The shopping list I suggested had 100g of beef which would give you 20g protein, 100g of fish the same 20g, and the two eggs would give 13g. That's 63g protein from the $1.83 spent on meat, fish and eggs, the foods richest in protein. When I looked at it last, at least here in Oz, tinned tuna is the cheapest source of protein from normal food, but bulk whey protein powder is a bit cheaper. I wouldn't advise people to have protein shakes in lieu of meals, though - it's not just protein, but many other nutrients we need.

The Australian Institute of Sport, who should know something about the topic, tell us that you need 1g protein a day per kg of bodyweight to maintain your lean mass, and 1.4-1.8 to gain some. I work as a trainer, and I've found this to be true; some people will have much more protein, but that's usually more to displace other things - if you have more steak you won't want as many doughnuts, etc. So $1.83 worth of protein-rich food would be enough protein to maintain lean bodymass of a 63kg guy (this is a small guy), but not enough if he's running around or lifting weights.

However, $2 a day wouldn't be enough for protein AND other stuff needed. $4 you could do it. But if you're bigger than 63kg and/or physically very active you'd want more.

The vegetarians get by fine when they add in dairy. The vegans do badly. Unfortunately that's the evidence from studies.

For example, if people are intensive care, vegetarians tend to do better than meat-eaters. But this doctors attribute not to the absence of meat, but simply that most meat-eaters are completely ignorant about nutrition, while most vegetarians think about it some more - the meat eaters aren't get their 2 fruit and 5 vegies a day, the vegetarians are.

But vegans do very badly in intensive care, much worse than ordinary meat-eaters. And as in intensive care, so too in the rest of their lives, including psychologically. Informed vegetarians > uninformed meat-eaters > vegans. I would expect that meat-eaters would do best of all, if they informed themselves a bit. It doesn't take much, like I said the govt recommendations are enough.

If living on very restricted spending, you'd definitely want to swap out meat for dairy for many meals. But if you had neither you'd be struggling nutritionally.

Note also that dairy is lower in protein than meat. fish and eggs, so you'd have to consume more. For example, to get that 63g of protein from meat, fish and eggs cost $1.85. Milk is 35g of protein per lt, so you'd need 1.8lt milk which would cost $1.62; the tasty cheese is 22.5g/100g, so you'd need 288g cheese which would cost $1.73; the yoghurt is 5.3g/100g so you'd need 1.15kg which would cost $3.44.

So to get the equivalent amount of protein from dairy as from meat, fish or eggs would mean spending almost as much or more, and consuming larger amounts - this would be good if you were active and needed the energy, but the relatively sedentary would be chubbing up. And this is how vegetarians can surprise us by being overweight.

The highest-protein nuts are peanuts, which are 24.4g protein per kg. These usually cost $9-$12/kg, depending on pack size. You'd need 258g of peanuts to get 63g protein, which would cost you $2.32. That's a lot of peanuts to chow down on, and it works out more expensive than the meat and dairy options (except for yoghurt). Other nuts are lower in protein but also cost more per weight, unfortunately - almonds etc are just more fashionable, pushes the price up.

None of this looks at the other nutrients involved, like iron. For example women need more iron than men, many are deficient and this does have serious effects on their health.

Once you start looking into get X amount of nutrients from $Y, you start to see why most people do eat as they do - eating meat and dairy.

Unfortunately, vitamin pills don't cut it to replace what we need from food. For example, we know that vitamin D is absorbed better by the body in the presence of calcium, and vice versa. And where do we find vitamin D in nature? In seafood, which is also high in calcium. Vitamin C is absorbed better in the presence of fibre. And where do we find vitamin C in nature? In oranges and the like, which are also relatively high in fibre. It's almost as though nature expects us to eat food rather than pop a pill. And if you spoke to any doctor or nutritionist, I think you'd find 100% of them support this: eat food, don't take a pill instead.

Besides which, pills are usually expensive, so the person on restricted spending would be better-served just buying the fish and oranges.

You can survive on $2 a day. But you won't thrive. On the other hand I have a single friend who spends $250 a week on food for himself... compared to the $125 for our household of 2 adults and 2 kids. He also complains about his weight. So $2 a day isn't enough, and $36 a day is too much.

$4-$10 a day for normal-sized meat-eating adults seems reasonable and can lead to their thriving physically.

Possibly. But in the end, I'm not a nutritionist. I'm just taking the government healthy eating advice at face value, and going by what I've seen with people lifting. Usually only vegans lack protein, everyone else is fine for it, maybe they just have to up it a bit if they really start smashing the weights, the real issue is people not eating enough fresh fruit and vegies. So they slump around miserably and are always getting sick or with minor injuries, etc.

If you think meat is expensive, remember there are other parts of the cow, or even the chicken. When I was a student I used to eat chicken livers all the time. The supermarket practically gave them away. And they taste good.

Women and older folk get less, only breastfeeding women get more overall, so this can be considered an upper limit to consumption under govt recommendations.

Now looking at the cheapest versions of each at my local supermarket, assuming I bought in some bulk and spread things out,

Vegies, frozen mixed, 1kg = $3 or 0.45x$3 = $1.35/day. There are cheaper packs of mixed vegies, but these are usually bulked up with potatoes and corn, which technically fit in the "grains" category. Fresh can be had for $3/kg and up, though.

Fruit can be got for $2/kg seasonally on average, so that's 0.3x$2 = $0.60/day

Grain you'd want some variety, and with 3 cups to have just have 1 of each a meal. I would get- oats 750g pack for $1.20 = $0.24/day- rice 1kg pack for $1.40 = 0.15x$1.40 = $0.21/day- pasta 500g pack penne $0.65 = 150/500x$0.65 = $0.20/day

In all, $5.52 a day, $38.64 a week or $167.31 per calendar month. You'd have to get some things weekly and some monthly, like you'd buy a 1kg block of cheese and use it over 25 days.

If we just chose the cheapest in each category and didn't care about variety, it'd be vegies $1.35/dayfruit $0.60/daygrain - pasta $0.20/daymeat etc - eggs $1.50/daydairy - milk $0.69/dayOr $4.34/day in all.

They allow for a person like me 0-3 daily serves of "discretionary food choices", which is basically junk food, fizzy drinks and booze.

You could get the price a bit down by buying fresh seasonal vegies, and looking for bulk buy and "almost out of date, straight into the freezer" meat purchases, that sort of thing. At a guess you could knock it down 10-20% without too much drama.

But assuming none of that, it's only 2-3 times the $2 a day.

As a comparison, my own household of 2 adults and 2 children spends $125 a week on average, so 3-4 times this minimum for 1 male. Which seems about right, especially since we do get things like camembert from time to time.

In her other challenge, she tried to live in $4/day (being the equivalent of food stamps) and struggled. I would suggest that people who actually have a history of being poor would not feel prosperous, but they wouldn't struggle as she did. Speaking from my own experience of being low-income in the past, you learn strategies, you learn what tends to be cheap yet good, you learn the times supermarkets discount things, and so on. It's not easy but you manage.

For example, she bought a dozen organic eggs for US$3.99; people who are actually poor have no time nor interest in organic free range gluten-free vegan fair-trade stuff, they can't afford any pretensions. So that'd save $2 or so. Much the same goes for the half-gallon of almond milk - does she really think some single mother in the projects is putting almond milk on her cheerios?

Obviously circumstances will vary, some places are food deserts where all you can get cheap is sugary carbs. But she'd find she did better with experience. The pretensions would fade away, and she'd learn that butternut pumpkins are generally cheaper than pre-made butternut pumpkin soup.

Experience, and a lengthy acquaintance with the realities of low-income, make a big difference.

This was a good analysis. I do a similar analysis every year or so, to see how low I could theoretically go, as a non-gardener. The bulk of our grocery budget goes to fruits and vegetables, as I aim to eat 2 lbs a day, and at least get my spouse and kids to eat a fair bit too.

Using the cheapest numbers for me, I came up with $2.72 a day.That's averaging veggies at $0.75 a pound (I generally pay more than this. But this would be a lot of carrots, cauliflower, and onions).Averaging fruit at 0.50 a pound (bananas, apples, oranges)And for meat, it would be mostly beans, eggs, peanut butter, with a single serving of meat a day.

In reality, our annual grocery budget is approximately $7000 a year. That gets us to about $4.80 per person per day. Of course, it's a little higher than that because we occasionally eat out and my big kid gets lunch at school (we pay for this, but I don't put it into my grocery budget). That would add $450 and take our average to $5.10 per person per day.

I have friends who spend more on food than their mortgage. My food budget struggles are:- I want to keep it low-ish because I have had a single raise in 6.5 years- I can afford to buy higher quality, better food. So why don't I? (And I do, I mix and match discount food with more expensive local food). In general, Americans spend a small % of their budgets on food.- I'm not wiling to compromise by eating less produce.

When we get into the food budget talks, there are always the people who feed their families on $200 - $400 a month, and I just have to scroll on by, because that's not my reality, and I don't garden.

The vegetarians get by fine when they add in dairy. The vegans do badly. Unfortunately that's the evidence from studies.

For example, if people are intensive care, vegetarians tend to do better than meat-eaters. But this doctors attribute not to the absence of meat, but simply that most meat-eaters are completely ignorant about nutrition, while most vegetarians think about it some more - the meat eaters aren't get their 2 fruit and 5 vegies a day, the vegetarians are.

But vegans do very badly in intensive care, much worse than ordinary meat-eaters. And as in intensive care, so too in the rest of their lives, including psychologically. Informed vegetarians > uninformed meat-eaters > vegans. I would expect that meat-eaters would do best of all, if they informed themselves a bit. It doesn't take much, like I said the govt recommendations are enough.

If living on very restricted spending, you'd definitely want to swap out meat for dairy for many meals. But if you had neither you'd be struggling nutritionally.

Note also that dairy is lower in protein than meat. fish and eggs, so you'd have to consume more. For example, to get that 63g of protein from meat, fish and eggs cost $1.85. Milk is 35g of protein per lt, so you'd need 1.8lt milk which would cost $1.62; the tasty cheese is 22.5g/100g, so you'd need 288g cheese which would cost $1.73; the yoghurt is 5.3g/100g so you'd need 1.15kg which would cost $3.44.

So to get the equivalent amount of protein from dairy as from meat, fish or eggs would mean spending almost as much or more, and consuming larger amounts - this would be good if you were active and needed the energy, but the relatively sedentary would be chubbing up. And this is how vegetarians can surprise us by being overweight.

The highest-protein nuts are peanuts, which are 24.4g protein per kg. These usually cost $9-$12/kg, depending on pack size. You'd need 258g of peanuts to get 63g protein, which would cost you $2.32. That's a lot of peanuts to chow down on, and it works out more expensive than the meat and dairy options (except for yoghurt). Other nuts are lower in protein but also cost more per weight, unfortunately - almonds etc are just more fashionable, pushes the price up.

None of this looks at the other nutrients involved, like iron. For example women need more iron than men, many are deficient and this does have serious effects on their health.

Once you start looking into get X amount of nutrients from $Y, you start to see why most people do eat as they do - eating meat and dairy.

Unfortunately, vitamin pills don't cut it to replace what we need from food. For example, we know that vitamin D is absorbed better by the body in the presence of calcium, and vice versa. And where do we find vitamin D in nature? In seafood, which is also high in calcium. Vitamin C is absorbed better in the presence of fibre. And where do we find vitamin C in nature? In oranges and the like, which are also relatively high in fibre. It's almost as though nature expects us to eat food rather than pop a pill. And if you spoke to any doctor or nutritionist, I think you'd find 100% of them support this: eat food, don't take a pill instead.

Besides which, pills are usually expensive, so the person on restricted spending would be better-served just buying the fish and oranges.

You can survive on $2 a day. But you won't thrive. On the other hand I have a single friend who spends $250 a week on food for himself... compared to the $125 for our household of 2 adults and 2 kids. He also complains about his weight. So $2 a day isn't enough, and $36 a day is too much.

$4-$10 a day for normal-sized meat-eating adults seems reasonable and can lead to their thriving physically.

As an omnivorous doc, I'd love to see the studies, from an academic standpoint. I've only seen references to the studies that show a benefit to a vegetarian diet as opposed to a full diet for inpatients (not necessarily intensive care patients). Full disclosure, since diet is not my forte or primary interest, I've not read the full studies, just their discussion and conclusions.

Those are just using the keywords 'vegan diet' and 'intensive care'. I probably have to refine my search parameters but it would be much easier for me if you could just send me the studies, either here or through PM. Thanks.

As an omnivorous doc, I'd love to see the studies, from an academic standpoint. I've only seen references to the studies that show a benefit to a vegetarian diet as opposed to a full diet for inpatients (not necessarily intensive care patients).

I'll ask my doc who comes to my gym, he works in ER. I get the impression he reads beyond the minimum required for his work.

It makes intuitive sense to me, and matches my observations: vegetarians educate themselves about nutrition more than typical omnivores. The vegans are typically not motivated by nutritional considerations, there's often some anxiety and depression, so it's just another form of self-medication; and every anorexic nowadays claims veganism, it's a great excuse not to eat much. And the few vegans who aren't motivated by their mental illness, their considerations are moral and environmental, so they also don't look into the nutritional aspects.

The typical omnivore is, I stress, utterly ignorant about nutrition, too. They usually lack nutrients. The typical obese (but not overweight) person has constipation or diarrhea every single day, and takes far more than the normal number of sick days. But the huge amount of calories they get into them daily masks the effects of poor nutrition; someone lacking in fruit and vegies will lack energy, but a Mars bar or coke will fix that for at least twenty minutes or so.

There's no question that people can survive on all kinds of diets, we see it just in the variation of traditional cuisines around the world, long before we had what Kunstler calls "the 3,000 mile caesar salad" (made with ingredients flown across the country). We can survive, but can we thrive? And I think in this little frugal corner of the web, we're looking at thriving, since after all we could all save about 90% of our income if only we'd live in a cardboard box under a bridge and cook two minute noodles on a little burner, paying $10 a month for a gym membership so we could shower occasionally.

I find that a lot of docs who go into ER are well versed in nutrition. Perhaps not formal training, but just enough to be dangerous. As long as it works for themselves.

The above is an anecdote, one of the weakest forms of evidence. The broad generalizations you make regarding people who follow different types of diets may also fall into that categorization.Broad generalizations may help you to neatly organize facts in your brain but shouldn't be confused with an accurate description of reality outside of the people you already know.Something making intuitive sense to you and your observations bearing that something out is an activity that I can confidently say ALL of us do, everyday. Going about your day without those things would make you a crazy person.

This thread has taken a strange turn fully of mentally ill vegans and highly educated vegetarians. I turn back to my original request, which you may be turned off from now, of supplying the articles that purport a vegan diet leads to poor ICU outcomes. Most of my ICU patients are on tube feeds, and those are broken down into protein/carbohydrate/fat content percentages that I work out with a dietitian, as opposed to solid foods. This is because they are either in comas or on respirators. Usually when they come out of the coma or are able to breath on their own, I like to move them to stepdown as soon as possible.

There ARE times when they do eat solid meals.I am willing to change my medical practice based on these articles, if they are sound and apply to my patient population. I always am.

He's not responded yet. It makes intuitive sense since we do know that they are more likely to be iron and B12 deficient, which doesn't help healing. Obviously a hospital will remedy this, that's what hospitals do.

If observations have no objective value, I am curious as to why anyone does case studies. I understand that people will flavour observations with their own biases, mentally excluding those which go against them. But I should note that I was for some years vegetarian, and my own moral sense inclines towards it. So if anything, the bias affecting my observations would lead me to favour the vegetarians and vegans.

The "people I know" go beyond my immediate social circle. Working in a big gym, I spoke to people about their diet and exercise every day. My rule was to speak to one new person each day, and teach someone to squat or deadlift each day, as well we regularly had appointments officially introducing people to gyms. In the first 12 months I had official appointments with 111 people, spoke to 207 others for whom I recorded name and everything else they told me, and as well as teaching most of those how to lift, taught 187 others.

So in the first year I spoke to and worked with to some degree 505 different people, 318 of them in some detail - I didn't record what I spoke to the "taught to squat/deadlift" people so I won't count them. But all the rest I talked about food to some degree. After this first 12 months I stopped taking notes, as the notes were to see who I worked well with as a trainer, not to carry out some other kind of study.

48% (154/318) of the people I talked to reported some sort of dietary restriction.12% (37/318) of them were vegan.18% (57/318) were vegetarian.36% (118/318) of them reported some sort of gluten, lactose, fructose etc intolerance; I do not include coeliacs etc amongst this, only those reporting "intolerance", but only those diagnosed by a naturopath, etc. This included all of the vegans, and 77% (43/56) vegetarians. Thus, 85% (80/94) vegan/vegetarians reported food intolerances, but only 6% (14/224) of omnivores.

The other food restrictions were religious or diagnosed medical issues, like anaphylaxis with peanuts, etc.

Notably, while 40% (127/318) of the total I spoke with were male, only 3% (1/37) of vegans were male, and only 12% (7/57) of vegetarians were male. Women were 83% (97/118) of those with "intolerances."

Mental health issues. Now, we did meet people with serious and diagnosed mental health issues; the YMCA had an outreach programme, generally those people didn't show up to appointments (if it was serious enough to get a referral, it was serious to do things like stop them leaving the house for appointments here and there), and again my focus was on becoming a good trainer and earning money, so I didn't count these in my stats.

For the rest, most people did not talk about any mental health issues, but 7% (21/318) did, if not in my initial meeting with them then later. 90% (19/21) of those mentioning mental health issues had some food issues, too.

This is as far as I'll go in counting through the entries in my old notebook. But I can say that the majority of those reporting food restrictions were interested only in endurance training, not resistance training, and all of those preferring endurance felt that endurance = get smaller and lifting weights = getting bigger. And most of those wanting to get smaller were in the healthy range for BMI.

Now, I am not a mental healthcare professional, and as I said this is as far as I'll go in pouring through my old notes. But as I said I did work with people with serious diagnosed issues, and I have some personal experience of and with mentally ill people. Like a paramedic or the like, you start to get a feel for people. You don't need a psychology degree to know when someone's a bit disturbed.

And what I saw was that many people use food as a form of self-medication. Certainly obese people, engaging in "emotional eating" and the like, are self-medicating with food. But this applies to dietary restrictions, too. I saw a lot of people obviously suffering from varying degrees of anxiety and depression. This is not representative of the general population, since I spoke to those who sought me out, who logically are more likely to have some sort of troubles physical or mental, and those who were willing to talk to instructors in the gym (often the lonely).

As well, this was a high-income area, and we know that anxiety, depression, body image issues, self-diagnosed food intolerances and so on are more common in high-income areas than low.

Nonetheless it does indicate some trends. I have stronger evidence for my assertions about vegans and vegetarians than surgeons do for performing spinal fusions, knee arthroscopies and the like, but they still go ahead and do them.

Just piping in to agree that this thread has sidetracked on the vegan issue. I'm *very* close to being vegan (I travel for work so it can be tricky to be sure that everything I eat in a restaurant is vegan - I just don't stress about "hidden" animal products or possible cross-contamination) and a large majority of my friends are vegan and none suffer from obvious mental health or chronic health issues. I can't argue against Kyle when he says he has been running into depressed vegans but that could just be bad luck.

I'm vegan for health reasons and the last time I had bloodwork done (a few months ago), the resident who was working with my GP enthusiastically told me I had "super human blood" before asking me what kind of diet I followed (my GP knows about my food choices and has no issues with them). The only supplement I take is for B12 and I had issues with B12 absorption for years and took a supplement even when I was eating animal products.

People who are informed about nutrition will always have better diets because they pay attention to what they eat, whether they are omnivores/vegetarians/vegan.

As far as Elon Musk's challenge, I've seen other versions of it in the past (with even lower $ restrictions) and it was generally agreed that it was possible, although certainly not ideal, especially over the longterm.

People who are informed about nutrition will always have better diets because they pay attention to what they eat, whether they are omnivores/vegetarians/vegan.

Agreed. It's just that as I said, if for reasons of taste, ethics, religion or physiology you remove some food from your diet, you must get its nutrients from other sources. So the more you remove the more you must know about nutrition.

This knowledge is useful when planning for frugality, since as we've seen, in the Western world calories are cheap, nutrients are not.

"An interesting dilemma I faced during the food-stamp challenge was this feeling of being an outsider, particularly when I would meet up with coworkers or friends at restaurants and bars, only to sip on a glass of free water. I didn't care too much about not being able to drink a beer or eat chicken tenders, but it made me feel detached from the group."

It makes intuitive sense to me, and matches my observations: vegetarians educate themselves about nutrition more than typical omnivores. The vegans are typically not motivated by nutritional considerations, there's often some anxiety and depression, so it's just another form of self-medication; and every anorexic nowadays claims veganism, it's a great excuse not to eat much. And the few vegans who aren't motivated by their mental illness, their considerations are moral and environmental, so they also don't look into the nutritional aspects.

[Begin rant]

Uhm. I feel vegans are getting a bashing here with little concrete evidence in terms of academic studies. I've been a vegan for over 3 years now and my bloodwork has always been great. Of course, I take my B12 supplements once a week (I'm not an idiot), and also D vitamins because I live in the far north where everyone is advised to take supplements year round.

True, I was not motivated by nutrition when I slowly made my transition to leave animal products behind (environmental issues[1] and not wasting resources[2] are more my concerns), but once I did, of course I was going to do my homework [3],[4],[5] when it came to nutrition. Also, I've actually been much less depressed and moody after the switch. My body feels lighter, my energy levels are higher, I am able to keep concentrating on my work for longer stretches of time.

For the average Joe, the protein is an absolute non issue. Most people in the "developed" parts of the West eat more than twice their required protein each day, even those who think they are deficient. Too much protein can damage your kidneys over time, unless you get your protein from plants[6]. A vegan diet is also considered safe for all age groups and demographics, even pregnant women and growing children, provided they get a healthy variety and do due diligence with homework, of course[7]. It can also reduce the risk of other conditions, like diabetes[8], rheumatoid arthiritis[9], [10] and even fibromyalgia[11].

Also, a $1.5 a day challenge went around the world a few years back, to give people an idea of how a large portion of the world's poor live, which was quite manageable on a vegan diet[17]. A quick and dirty list of consequences related to animal product consumption[18].

"Vegans" are not a generalized, homogeneous, white, pasty and unhealthy group binging on avocado toast or oreos while occupying farms. There is a large variation in age group, motivation and level of health represented. There are even a rising number of pro athletes[19][20][21][21][22].

FWIW, a gym is a very self-selecting crowd, making for a very biased group.

^Well said, Snow. Kyle is inserting observation bias for "facts" in this thread and has not backed it up with ANY respected study.

Tom Brady is 40 and follows a vegan diet nearly year-round, with some fish added during the football season. Does that mean all NFL players should become vegan? Some are - Arian Foster, Colin Kaepernick, etc.

I don't think there's a perfect diet for all people. I think the key is eating WHOLE foods and avoiding processed foods, added sugars, etc. Whether that's keto, vegan, paleo...as long as people are consuming whole foods I think that's a positive. It's up to the individual (perhaps with assistance from a doctor) to determine what is going to be sustainable for them long-term - that's another key, can you live on your diet for 5-10+ years? Crash diets don't work and actually cause worse long-term damage.

I've heard $2/meal as the rough goal to hit based on semi-decent food. $2/day would be tough - would be very bland pasta, rice as your starch bases with some cheap veggies thrown in. Not sure you can get good nutrition and near 2,000 calories for $2/day but I think you can get close.

I'd be willing to do whatever the equivilant of this would be that would also be a healthy diet.

Healthy body = healthy mind = healthy bank account. Saving a few hundred bucks a month costs in exchange for being fat because you live on carbs is basically what my mothers side of the family did. I think every single one of them is diabetic :P.

Tom Brady is an example of what I said earlier: examples of top athletes being vegan involve at least 1 of the following 3:

1. they built their body using meat, and are only maintaining it as vegans2. they are using anabolic steroids, which allow you to make better use of the protein you do get into you3. they're loudly vegan for a few months, and then quietly stop a little while later

Now, we know that #1 is true for Brady, he's not a lifelong vegan. He's not yet succumbed to #3. I leave it as an exercise to the reader to decide whether they believe #2 is a possibility. Obviously, your favourite athlete is always drug-free, it's just those athletes on that other team who are all juicing like madmen. Thanks Lance and Usain.

I didn't say it was impossible to be healthy being vegan; I did say it was more difficult, and that most vegans didn't have health as their goal. Nor did I say it was impossible to maintain a high level of sports performance while being vegan; I did say it was difficult, and that it was impossible to build up and achieve that high level of sports performance as a vegan.

And we can say that being vegan wouldn't drop the daily food bill much, because the nutritionally-equivalent substitutes aren't cheap.

And we can say that being vegan wouldn't drop the daily food bill much, because the nutritionally-equivalent substitutes aren't cheap.

Actually, I can say that. It dropped my food bill by a lot. As a student, I was overjoyed to be able to afford to swap some of the frozen veggies in my diet for fresh ones once I phased out the meat and dairy (but I still paid less, even with the addition of more fresh fruit and veg). If I had stayed with the primarily frozen veggies and continued with grains/legumes as my primary sources of carbs and protein, my grocery bill would have gone down by at least 1/3.

Feel free to respond to any of Snow's citations while you keep spewing confirmation bias.

Why? Is this a discussion forum, or are we to begin writing scholarly articles and picking through each and every reference, offering counter-references and counter-counter-references and purchasing the articles and contacting the authours to discover exactly how the study was done and...? It's just a discussion forum.

It's trivial for an interested person to do. For example, simply clicking on Snow's links, he mentions environmental issues with his first link, which I've never disputed: much of agriculture is wastefully done, for example in Australia growing the most water-intensive main crops in the world (cotton and rice, both vegan-friendly crops, by the way) in the Mallee, which is basically desert, so water is diverted from rivers causing desalination, etc. Western agriculture is, on the whole, wasteful and destructive, and this applies whether we eat meat or not. Rice production, for example, is a major contributor to carbon emissions - but are we to ask 2 billion impoverished Indians and Chinese to stop eating rice? No. The answer is to do it better.

His next few links are saying veganism can be nutritionally sound, which I've not disputed - just that most vegans like most meat-eaters know nothing about nutrition, and feed themselves badly.

His sixth link he misrepresents. He says that "Too much protein can damage your kidneys over time, unless you get your protein from plants", but his link says,

"The long-term effects of animal protein on normal kidney function are not known. Although data on persons with chronic kidney disease are limited, it appears that high intake of animal and vegetable proteins accelerates the underlying disease process not only in physiologic studies but also in short-term interventional trials."

in other words: too much protein can damage your kidneys if you already have kidney disease, and whether the protein comes from animals or vegetables makes no difference; so it essentially says exactly the opposite of what he told us.

It's worked for him and he's healthy and not wasting money. Great! But it doesn't for most, simply because health isn't their goal; quite the opposite. It's a common part of eating disorders. Eating disorders are a luxury of the wealthy Western world - there is no anorexia in South Sudan. And no gluten intolerance, either, for that matter. They have better things to worry about.

Kyle, your study of diet applies only to your subjects in a gym in a certain demographic in Melbourne. Vegan gym goers could be quite different from other vegans..I would also hazare a guess that gym patrons have a higher propensity to care about self image and thus eating disorders. You would need to survey non gym goers to get a more accurate picture.

Also with your pricing I find it quite easy to find fresh vegetables under $3 a kilo. Carrots often go for $1 a bag, huge cabbage at least 2 to 3 kilos for $4. Potatoes $1 a kilo, spinach was $2 last week, at least a kilo.

I used to work in a business office, with a very frugal man. For lunch, every day, he hate a can of tuna fish and a free bag of popcorn that was supplied in the breakroom.

Then, he poured the leftover coffee from the breakroom, into a thermos and took it home. By then, it had turned into sludge because the pot had been sitting on a burner all day. But hey, it was free coffee.

I'm actually in the middle of the SNAP challenge, but have inadvertently completed the first week spending a total of $13.34.

It wasn't just rice, beans, and pasta - but it certainly included those things. I'm a huge pasta fan anyway.

I also upped the challenge in response to comments I read on articles about people who did this. So I declared I can only shop once per week at the 99 Cents Only store (not a full grocer). Also, I can't use my microwave or oven to cook. Lastly, I started with zero ingredients - no food or spices I already had could be used, not even my salt and pepper.

This increased difficulty was my attempt to simulate being in a food desert and not having a fully functioning kitchen available.

I just completed the second week and was still under $16, or 75 cents per meal on average. But yea, spending the money on produce instead of filling foods will leave you hungry at this budget level.

Rockstar Finance actually featured my post on it last week, which was nice.